


Rebirthday

by tempus_teapot (dreadnot)



Series: In the Strangest Places [14]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Fluff, Gift Fic, M/M, in the strangest places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:45:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadnot/pseuds/tempus_teapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fluffy birthday moment for Zevran. A combined birthday gift and fic for Zevran week on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebirthday

**Author's Note:**

> This could be said to be the fluff that follows the sad from a three-sentence story I wrote for a prompt on tumblr, "Zev/Dal - birthday"
> 
>  **Too Much to Learn**  
>  It wasn’t until after they had been together as an honest, acknowledged, exclusive couple (Isabela still didn’t count, no matter what Zev said) for more than a year that Dal realized just how much more he still had to learn about his lover.
> 
> “What do you mean you don’t know your own birthday?”
> 
> Zevran’s gentle answer told a wealth of tales, “My love, have you given much thought to the life of a child of a dead whore?”

“It took you long enough.”

The familiar voice that greeted Zevran from the Vigil’s battlements made Zevran cast his eyes upward, a smile already spreading his lips.

“I had so many people to kill,” he called up to the man backlit by the sun. “Surely you must know how that is.”

Zevran’s fond memory filled in the details his eyes could not make out - sensuous lips, high cheekbones, eyes the color of the richest walnut, and dark skin that contrasted his own honeyed complexion to perfection. He would be wearing the earring that Zevran had given him. Zevran had pierced his ear for him before they had been forced to part for the first time after the Archdemon’s demise. He could not wait to admire their bodies together again after months of separation and put his mouth to Dal’s ear to kiss that place where Zevran had penetrated him to mark him as his own.

“I might,” Widald Amell called and disappeared from view.

“Don’t let the Commander fool ya,” came a gruff remark that drew Zevran’s eyes away from the battlements. Oghren sat half-sprawled on the steps up into the keep and leered when Zevran started toward him. “He’s been up there every day watching the gates like some kind of sky-struck nug.”

“Is that so?” Zevran paused on the steps long enough to clasp Oghren’s hand in greeting, grinning down at his old friend. “Then I should not keep him waiting any longer than necessary, no?”

Oghren grunted. “Just close the door this time. Last time you and the Commander had one of your little reunions, I… eh… it gets confusing is all.”

“Is that so?” Zevran asked, his smile curling into a smirk. “What was it that confused you? Surely he and I have all the same—” He considered Oghren and amended, “—similar parts. I admit that I am quite flexible….”

Oghren thumped Zevran’s leg with a fist. “That’s enough outta you. Go see the Commander and remember what I told you.”

“Ah yes,” Zevran said, grinning even more broadly, “We shall be certain to close the door to avoid confusing your delicate dwarven sensibilities.”

He fairly flew up the steps now. _Up there every day?_ The thought warmed him more than he might have expected. It was like something out of one of those terrible romance novels he had been forced to read when he was still an apprentice, learning what popular ideas of love were in order to mimic them properly. The mimicry had always come easily, the reality was still a constant confusion, frequent delight, and occasional pain to him.

In the throne room, he spotted Dal’s other dwarven warden. He threw a jaunty wave to Sigrun, whose broad grin was almost as sappy as he suspected his own was.

“I saw him heading for his office,” she said in response to his cocked eyebrow and glance toward the door at the back of the great room that led to the functional backbone of the keep. “You’d better hurry, he was moving fast.”

 _Oh, was he?_

Zevran picked up his pace until he was barely containing himself from running. He, an Antivan Crow – former Antivan Crow – scourge of half the beds in Antiva City, was brought to this state?

He slowed when he reached the hall that led to Dal’s office and acknowledged to himself that yes, he was indeed brought to this state, and it made him happier than he had ever been in his life, no matter the tiny voice in the back of his head that said that someday his love would die as all things die.

He banished the voice with the ease of a lifetime’s practice before he rapped his knuckles on the office door.

“Come.”

Indeed. That was a high priority.

Dal was waiting for him, of course, sitting on the desk rather than behind it, just a few paces from the door. As always, there was no headlong rush into his arms, but a moment of assessment, each regarding the other silently.

Zevran knew what he was looking for - confirmation that his beloved was whole and well, and to be reminded that memory had not done his lover justice no matter how beautiful Dal was in his mind’s eye.

He’d asked Dal once what he was looking at when they had this moment. “I’m counting all your limbs. I know one day you’ll come back to me missing something,” he had deadpanned until Zev had pressed him harder. Then Dal had told him a truth that both warmed and terrified him. “When you come into the room after a long absence, it’s like blowing on banked coals until they flare into flame again. I have to be still for a moment or I’ll burn.”

He had been unable to summon any response to that but a kiss. This man, this mad, beautiful man, did what no other lover had ever done, stealing the honeyed words from Zevran’s lips to leave him with only truths.

“So,” he said at last, “I have returned and I have been told that I must close the door this time.”

Dal’s solemn expression broke for the faintest of smiles. “Oghren.”

“How did you guess?”

Dal finally stood and crossed the distance between them, one hand coming up to cradle Zev’s cheek as he leaned to kiss him, the other pushing the door closed with a decisive click.

It was a good kiss for a hello, strong lips, the familiar pattern of a light kiss, a nip to his lower lip, and then the warmth and flavor of his mouth. Dal tasted different on different days - sometimes with the sharp electric ozone tang of magical workings and the flat, subterranean flavor of lyrium, sometimes flavored with the spices of the Antivan tea Zevran had introduced him to and which he drank often now. This morning Dal tasted of apples and the thick bite of sharp cheese that told Zevran he had come just after the breakfast hour.

Somewhere in the midst of their greeting kiss, he pressed himself against Dal, arms around his sides, fingers digging into his shoulder blades. Dal might be taller and broader, but Zev’s compact frame held more muscle than his lover’s. He enjoyed the disparity, feeling safe in Dal’s arms yet still confident that he was capable of protecting Dal in return.

“I saw him,” Dal said when they broke from the kiss for a moment. His forehead was against Zev’s and every word brushed his breath against Zev’s lips.

His beloved also had a sometimes infuriating habit of picking up lines of conversation as though nothing had passed between one sentence and the next. Zevran had learned to follow them, but had also made it a constant goal to make Dal forget everything in his arms.

“You saw him and you did not close the door? My love, I have been a very good–”

“Bad.”

“A very good influence on you,” Zevran continued as though Dal had not interrupted. “Why should there be any shame in what two men do together?”

“I’m not ashamed,” Dal said sternly. “I am discreet.”

“Yet you did not close the door, and why is that, I wonder?”

Finally Dal’s stern facade cracked and he gave Zevran a rare grin. “I thought he’d either learn his lesson about peeping or maybe learn something Felsi would appreciate the next time he sees her.”

“Yet alas, we have only confused him,” Zevran said with feigned sorrow.

Dal pressed a last kiss to Zevran’s mouth and drew away, slipping a hand into Zev’s and twining their fingers together. “He’ll get over it.” He tugged him toward the far side of the desk and its wonderfully large chair. “Come here.”

Obediently, Zev followed and allowed Dal to pull him down into his lap when he sat. If allowed was the proper term when he would have been there in an instant even without an invitation.

Before Zev could pick up where they had left off, Dal asked, “Do you know what day it is?”

Ah, yes, these were games couples played, were they not? Zevran answered immediately, relishing the surprise in his lover’s eyes that he remembered. “It is the anniversary of the day I tried to kill you.”

He chuckled and shifted in Dal’s lap to get more comfortable. “An assassin lives and dies in the details. How could I forget the day I met you?”

“Mm.” Dal hummed noncommittally.

Zevan chucked him under the chin. “You are making marks on that scorecard you keep in your head. Another point for Zevran.”

“Perhaps.” Dal pointed to his desk. “Top right hand drawer. There’s a box inside. Take it.”

“Oh, you charmer, what do you have for me this time?” Zevran pulled the drawer open and took out a box far too small for a dagger. It must be a piece of jewelry. Dal had given him rings and necklaces before, this must be….

He opened the box and went still, forgetting for just a moment to breathe.

Dal plucked out the jeweled earring - a perfect match to the one that Zev had placed in his ear and motioned for him to turn his head. While Dal slid the gold wire through the hole in his lobe he said, “I had this made. Since you told me that you don’t know your birthday, I chose this day when you were born again away from the Crows.”

He closed the earring and met Zevran’s eyes. “Does that meet your approval?”

Zevran felt the heavy weight of the earring and the fearsome lightness in his heart and nodded.

“Yes. I am yours.”


End file.
